The research investigates human conditioning and learning of physiological reactions associated with emotional experience. The role of cognitive and perceptual evaluations of stimulus properties and contingencies among stimulus events is emphasized. Electrodermal responses (EDRs) and averaged evoked cortical potentials (AEPs) are the main dependent variables. There are four areas of experimentation: (1) Learned expectation and anticipation of stimulation are defined in terms of AEPs and EDRs occurring during the interstimulus interval of classical and signaled avoidance conditioning. (2) The effects of expectancy and anticipatory behavior are observed through changes in reaction to the anticipated stimulus, when it is properly signaled and when the stimulus received is not in accord with expectation. (3) Multivariate analyses of variance are proposed to examine the effects of basic conditioning parameters upon dependent relations among components and properties of the electrodermal response complex during learning. (4) Finally, empirical arrangements are proposed for explaining how verbal labels contribute to classical electrodermal conditioning with human subjects.